did a driving tour last november...rome, florence, bologna, milan, venice and the adriatic coast down to ascoli-piceo and back...during that time all the major cities has placards "close fort darby" and "no war in iraq"...thousands of students in florence, bologna, milan etc. werE demonstrating.....HAD ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEMS...ANYWHERE IN ITALY.

ASCOLI-PICENO

I'm not deterred.

We'll be leaving for 2 days in London and 7 in Floreence on the first week of April.

I travelled to Paris before the attack on Iraq and experienced no problems at all. I flew to Ireland post Iraq attack and I felt a definite unfriendly cold that I had not experienced on a previous trip to Ireland. I never travel to Europe in season. I will be renting a house on Block Island, RI this summer and hoping to get back to Europe in the fall/winter. I do hope the exchange rate gets better and that the anti American sentiment settles down, but then that is totally up to our government.

I do hesitate (just a little bit) planning a trip to the BIG Cities (LONDON, PARIS) in Europe for obvious reasons, but last year we cancelled a trip to Canadian Rockies/British Columbia last year due to SARS and Mad Cow Disease, so it's always something. You can't win. You just have to be much more on guard now than before.

We're going to London & Scotland next week. We cancelled a trip to London & Paris last Feb. due to concerns over the start of the war. Instead we went to Florida to visit friends. Later we found that there were strong terrorist threats the day we were at Disneyworld. Unless you're going to stay in the house buried under your covers, all you can do is be aware, and hope for the best.

Elle: Your post about driving vs. public transport reminded me of this column from the Sunday New York Times.

117 Deaths Each Day
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Here's a pop quiz. Rank the following in order of the number of American lives they claim in a typical year: food, guns, terrorists, flu and cars.

Ready? The most deadly are automobiles, which kill 117 Americans a day, or nearly 43,000 a year. Then comes flu, which (along with pneumonia, its associated disease) kills 36,000 people. Third is guns: 26,000 deaths. Fourth, food-borne illness: 5,000. And finally, terrorism, which in a typical year claims virtually no U.S. lives ? with horrific exceptions like 2001. But antiterrorism efforts get most of the attention and the resources.

To a point, that's sensible. The train bombings in Madrid are a reminder of our vulnerability. President Bush is right to emphasize the risk from W.M.D., because a single nuclear bomb could claim 500,000 lives.

Still, we need a balance in confronting threats, and I don't think we've found it. Watch President Bush's campaign ads, and it's clear that he's overwhelmingly focused on the war on terrorism ? in 2001, he called it "my primary focus." As he put it this year, "I'm a war president."

Mr. Bush's intensity and unwavering purpose comforted the nation in the aftermath of 9/11. But America is too complex to have national policy reduced to the single overarching priority of counterterrorism.

"It's an important threat, but it cannot be the organizing principle of our foreign policy," argues Ivo Daalder, a former national security official who is co-author of "America Unbound," an excellent (and respectful) book about Mr. Bush's administration. "There are worse threats out there. Climate change. H.I.V./AIDS."

Or, I would say, nuclear proliferation. Or cars.

Vehicle fatalities don't get attention because they occur in ones and twos. If people died at the same rate but in one horrifying crash a month that killed 3,500 people, then Mr. Bush and Congress would speedily make auto safety a priority and save thousands of lives a year. As Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has said: "If we had 115 people die a day in aviation crashes, we wouldn't have a plane in the sky."

"Driving a car is one of the most dangerous things we do," note Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres, two Yale professors, in their book about innovative thinking, "Why Not?" They note that a major effort by Sweden has reduced traffic deaths by encouraging seat belt use, converting intersections to traffic circles (they "soothe" traffic), replacing rigid guardrails with new rails or cables that absorb or "catch" cars, and exhorting cyclists to wear helmets. The upshot is that Sweden 's accident rate is one of the lowest in the world.

"If the United States could achieve Sweden's current standard, this would save 12,500 lives per year," the authors say.

Granted, it seems less presidential to call for more guardrails than to invade Middle Eastern countries. And, in fairness, President Bush's head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Dr. Jeffrey Runge, is pushing hard to save lives in unheralded ways, from improving S.U.V. design to getting drivers to check their tire pressure.

A month before Dr. Runge took up his post, several teenagers were rushed to the hospital where he worked as an emergency room physician. The driver in their car, a 17-year-old redhead named Sarah Longstreet, was known in her high school for her friendliness and her Bible Club activities. She wore a seat belt and her air bag inflated, but she died when a Ford Explorer veered across the center line and plowed right over the hood of her Mazda. That incompatibility in the two cars' designs made her one more unnecessary auto fatality ? and she became "sort of an angel to me," Dr. Runge said.

So when I asked him about priorities, he answered this way:

"First off, we have to do everything we're doing for counterterrorism," he said. "There's nothing that we're doing that we shouldn't be doing, and you can make the case that we should be doing more. . . . However, we're still losing 115 people a day on the highways, and basically the perpetrators of those deaths also fit within a profile" ? such as alcohol abusers.

Governing the U.S. is like playing 200 simultaneous chess matches (while whiny columnists second-guess every move on every board). The terrorism chessboard is among the most important, but if we could just devote a bit more energy to the others, we could save thousands of lives ? including the life of the next Sarah Longstreet.

Well, sort of.

When tossing around ideas for vacation, London did come up. And the BA cheap flight option did help put London high on the list. More concerned about delayed flights from Europe (remember BA daily delayed flight to Dulles, that was the flight on sale) and the weak US$.

Ended up planing a vacation in Colorado instead. Another bonus about the Rocky Mountains: less change of annoying cell phones. Click on my name for a post about a cell phone free places.

Thanks for the post on vehicle fatalities. I think I'll go now and cancel my car rental reservation.... :O (

Since we're often told that one of the problems with Americans is that they don't travel to other countries, it shouldn't cause any problems for Europe if the 20 or 30 Americans who do travel decide not to this summer.

Nope, not deterred. Since 9/11/01, I've been to London five times and Paris three times.

I'll be going to Paris again in June and I'm buying my ticket this week.

I am leaving for Paris in two weeks, and even though I wish the dollar was in better shape, it will not deter me from going...just be a little more choosy about what I buy there! I figure since France is NOT on particularly good terms with the U.S., they WON'T be the most likely place terrorists would strike. Hoping that it won't happen anywhere!

Leaving in two weeks for Paris then on to Florence. What are you supposed to do? Hide under the bed?

Not only am I not deterred, I am now seriously condsidering another lengthy trip to Europe (just spent five weeks last fall) to show these Muslim fanatics that they are not going to achieve their goal- the destruction of Western civilization!

Note I said "fanatics" - I have met many wonderful Muslims both here and abroad who I know cringe at these attacks and feel they don't, of course, represent the views of the many thinking, peace-loving Muslims.

sera--I did see that Kristoff column in the Times the other day. I commute 70 miles a day via I-95(by high m.p.g.car, there's no public transportation between home and work) and those statistics are always at the back of my mind.

My thinking about the Madrid train attacks was following the line of "where is there a critical density of people for terrorists to attack?". Trains, planes, ships, subways, certainly would have more potential for individual lives, but if they attacked bridges and tunnels there would be a critical mass of cars that would also have a huge impact.. .

I admit to having a lot of ambivalence, confusion, and cognitive dissonance on this topic. I want my world back.

Hi

there is a logical argument that visiting Europe is safer than being in US/UK ?

And regardless of world events it must be safer than downtown Detroit !

Peter
The Languedoc Page
http://tlp.netfirms.com

Um, lots of new threats today - whether they're from opportunists, or whoever . . .

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe...ats/index.html

I'm glad to hear that we fodorites aren't changing our travel or socializing plans. That would be giving in . . .

I think it is very unpatriotic to contemplate trips outside the country at this time while our balance of payments continues to deteriorate. In addition, this "outsourcing" is contributing to the loss of jobs. You Benedict Arnolds should be ashamed.

jsmith: where do people like you come from.

Oh somewhat..but we've travelled to Europe under a variety of circumstances. Frankly, we have a three week trip to France planned for the Fall. What raised our doubts more than anything was the bathroom caulk and re-grout job that has grown to a redo!!